Hospitality · 6 min read
What Does a Restaurant Website Really Cost?
Ask what a restaurant website costs and you get three very different answers. The site builder says: €15 a month. The web agency says: from €4,000. In between sit all-in-one services that bill monthly. All three are right. And all three leave something out. There is real revenue at stake: according to Statistik Austria’s ICT survey (2024), Austrian accommodation and food service businesses with ten or more employees already generated 24.1 percent of their 2023 revenue through websites, apps, and online platforms. And from our conversations with restaurant owners in Vienna, we know this much: the most expensive website is the one that is permanently out of date.
Site builders: cheap, until you count your own time
Wix, Squarespace, or Jimdo cost between €10 and €40 a month. Sounds unbeatable. Except nobody builds the site for you. You pick the template, take the photos, write the copy, type in the menu, and make sure Google Maps, fonts, and cookies are embedded in a GDPR-compliant way.
Many owners sink a string of evenings into this at the start. Then, quite often, nothing happens anymore. Last summer’s menu is still online, the holiday hours are wrong, and there is no reservation system because that would be another subscription. The low price only holds as long as your time is free.
Agencies: a beautiful site, but every change is a ticket
A traditional web agency typically charges between €2,000 and €10,000 for a restaurant website, depending on scope. You get custom design and solid engineering. The result usually looks great.
The trouble starts after launch. The daily menu changes, so do holiday hours. If each update needs a support ticket, you quickly pay €50 to €100 per change. Or you stop updating, and the site goes stale. Maintenance contracts, hosting, and the domain come on top as separate items.
All-in-one services: one price, everything included
Providers specialized in hospitality bill monthly, usually €100 to €250. That covers design, tech, hosting, and the tools a restaurant actually needs: a digital menu, online reservations, a dashboard for making changes yourself.
At first glance this looks pricier than a site builder. Projected over three years, the picture often flips, because update fees and extra subscriptions disappear.
The cost nobody budgets for: reservation commissions
External booking platforms charge a fee per guest or per booking, depending on the provider. For a busy restaurant that adds up to several hundred euros a month, year after year. These costs never appear in a website quote, but they belong in any honest calculation.
A reservation system that is part of your own website and works commission-free saves exactly that amount.
Our advice: project over three years
Take every offer and run it over 36 months. Monthly fees, estimated update costs, reservation fees, hosting, domain. Only then can you compare a €15 site builder, a €5,000 agency project, and an all-inclusive package. And check one question in particular: can you change the menu and opening hours yourself, without asking anyone?
| Site builder | Agency | All-in-one service | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | €10–40 / month | €2,000–10,000 one-off | €100–250 / month |
| Who builds the site? | you, over many evenings | the agency | the provider |
| Changes | yourself, when time allows | via ticket, often €50–100 per update | yourself, in the dashboard |
| What often comes on top | reservation subscription, your own hours | maintenance contract, hosting, domain | usually nothing |
| Base cost over 36 months | €360–1,440 | €2,000–10,000 plus running items | €3,600–9,000 |
Price ranges from this article; typical market rates as of 2026
And what does it cost with us?
Our hospitality package GuestMaker starts at €150 a month, or alternatively €999 one-off plus €50 monthly. Digital menu, commission-free online reservations, hosting, and a privacy-compliant setup are included. Changes happen in your own dashboard, even at 11 pm, no ticket required.